50 million voters defy Taliban’s suicide bombers and assassins

For once there was joy in Pakistan. The streets were filled with people supporting their political heroes. They covered their faces in paint; they held banners in the air and they chanted the names of their leaders.

Because so many Pakistanis cannot read, each candidate was identified on the general election ballot paper by a symbol. In Lahore, the main contest was between Imran Khan’s cricket bat and Nawaz Sharif’s tiger. Cars roared around the city with young people hanging out of the windows waving bats and tiger cuddly toys at passers-by. Normally in Pakistan when politics spill on to the streets it ends in tear gas — or worse. This election day ended in smiles. It was an especially remarkable outcome given that the campaign started so badly.

A Taliban propagandist, apparently unimpressed by what he had been taught in a Western university, issued a statement rejecting the views of Kant, Rousseau and Bentham and saying the only real truth came from Allah. Democracy, the statement continued, was a system designed by infidels that the Taliban would destroy. It vowed to kill those who took part in the process of electing a new government.

Over the course of the campaign, the jihadis kept that promise. They concentrated their attacks on the political parties most critical of them. There were so many bombings that some parties decided not to hold big election rallies. But the men of violence could not stop the Pakistani people from voting. In a record turnout, 50 million people defied danger and cast their ballots.

I witnessed women in burkas, the elderly in wheelchairs, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, all turn out to vote. It was a stunning rejection of the militants’ message.

The Taliban gave it all they had.They deployed suicide bombers and young men with remote-controlled devices. They sent assassins to target candidates and murderers to attack rallies. Over the course of the campaign the Taliban succeeded in killing more than 130 people. But it was all in vain. The people voted. And, for once, the Taliban had a bad day.